These photographs are eye candy, but also so much more: They give you an intimate look at characters you might never otherwise encounter (the biker chicks of Marrakesh), and reveal lifestyles you might not otherwise have known existed (and may wish to remain ignorant of, in the case of the Purity Ball movement in America’s Bible Belt). Some illustrate contemporary social and political issues, while a few just put original spins on the Internet’s bread and butter–cute animal photos. What these photo essays have in common, and what makes them so powerful, is that they all tell stories. None are merely decorative. They serve as a reminder that at its best, photography is a storytelling tool.

It’s a lot like a wedding, except to your dad. At purity balls, a Christian religious ceremony that’s gaining popularity, American girls (some as young as four) vow to their fathers that they’ll remain virgins until marriage. The formal events tend to include dinner, a keynote speech, and ballroom dancing, and the girls get decked out in, um, white gowns. The father, as “High Priest of their home and family,” makes a pledge to protect his daughter’s “purity” during the affair. Often, they exchange purity rings. Stockholm-based photographer David Magnusson captures all this in his book Purity. Over the course of five months, Magnusson traveled to purity balls in Louisiana, Texas, Colorado, and Arizona. On each occasion, he spent an hour interviewing and photographing the father-daughter pair. The poses were up to the subjects themselves, undirected by Magnusson.

If you ever find yourself feeling nostalgic for your secret middle school Wiccan phase, or if have a friend crush on Hermione (or just enjoy casting the occasional spell), you’ll love Katarzyna Majak’s portraits of modern-day Polish witches. Majak began taking photographs of women on alternative spiritual paths after participating in a “shamanic workshop,” which was part of her personal quest for spirituality beyond her Catholic upbringing in Poland.

London’s exceptionally clean streets hide a dystopian-looking underworld, blocked off from the vast majority of the public for decades. There are networks of dank hidden sewers, cable conduits, road and utility tunnels, old catacombs, and abandoned train tubes. Now, a daring group of self-identified “place-hackers” is using photography to bring this chthonic region to light, however forbidden their explorations may be. Subterranean London: Cracking the Capital, assembles material from 12 anonymous photographers infatuated with visiting and documenting underground spaces illegally. Featured in the book are shots of the abandoned British Museum tube station, rumored to be haunted by the ghost of an Egyptian pharaoh’s daughter; the ruins of stations destroyed by WWII bombs; and deep-level shelters repurposed as sites for secure document storage.

In his latest photo series Seth Casteel’s underwater puppies paddle frantically toward the camera, wide-eyed and extra wet-nosed. As young as six weeks and as old as six months, the young pooches follow Casteel’s rubber toys.

Tokyo is known for its legendary street style, where fashion tribes, from Yamanba to cosplay to Lolita, don elaborate outfits. New York City-based photographer Thomas Card spent the spring of 2012 in Tokyo shooting the capital’s street fashion. More than 130 of his photos were published in a glorious book called Tokyo Adorned.

“Metal” might not be the first adjective that comes to mind when you think of cats. But that might change after you see the images from photographer Alexandra Crockett’s book, Metal Cats, published by powerHouse Books. It chronicles the deep, dark bonds between fans of heavy, guitar-laden music and their feline companions.

Sometimes an office is just an office. But if you’re a psychoanalyst, the presentation of your work space has to be impeccably thought out, designed to foster a sense of sanctuary and privacy. Since Sigmund Freud’s Victorian consulting room, with its oriental rug-draped couch, analysts have learned to use interior design as a therapeutic tool. In his ongoing series “In the Shadow of Freud’s Couch,” Mark Gerald, who’s both a photographer and a psychoanalyst, offers a look inside the offices of analysts all over the world.

Andre Rosa’s Kickstarter-funded project merges the two things that he feels have the most cultural currency in New Hampshire: covered bridges and drag queens. The software engineer turned calendar publisher, who’s based in Manchester, joked about his light bulb moment last summer to a friend, then realized he was onto something. He decided to create a monthly calendar featuring centerfolds of drag queens in front of covered bridges.

In the early 2000s, photographers James and Karla Murray embarked on a journey to capture the mom-and-pop stores of New York City. Their book, Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York, showed a city that’s quickly fading into memory: one full of local delis, beloved bars, and shops devoted entirely to hosiery. A decade later, they returned to capture what those stores have become in a new project, Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York—10 Years Later. The answer: Subways, Chase bank branches, and Verizon stores.

Photographer Todd Baxter doesn’t try to capture real life in his photos. He’s a narrative artist whose medium happens to be photography. “I have these ideas for a scene—like two kids looking into a glowing hole at night in the woods (“Owl Scouts”) or the aftermath of a burglary with a couple tied up in their living room (“Bound and Gagged”),” he says, “and I try to make them happen.” His photography isn’t photorealistic: It’s staged, slightly off-kilter, and just a bit surreal. He uses a camera, but his work is less photojournalistic than it is painterly.

The world of creative canine coiffure is a truly, deeply weird one. Last year, New York City-based photographer Paul Nathan traveled to New Jersey’s Intergroom, a high-profile grooming competition, because of course those exist, and took portraits of pooches clipped and dyed to look like flamingoes, clowns, leopards, and parrots, among other un-dogly things. These freakish glamour shots are compiled in a book, Groomed, from Pelluceo Publishing.

You’ve probably never seen a biker gang quite like this. In photographer Hassan Hajjaj’s series “Kesh Angels,” the lady motorcyclists of Marrakesh, Morocco, wear polka-dot abaya and Nike-branded djellaba, posing on their bikes against brightly painted walls. The juxtaposition of traditional Islamic dress with biker-tough posturing and Western branding upends stereotypes of Muslim women as anti-modern and ultra-conservative.

Andre Govia describes himself as “addicted to decay.” The U.K.-based urban explorer’s book of photography, Abandoned Planet, is an extensive tribute to that addiction, which has taken Govia and his camera to more than 22 countries over the past 15 years. Govia, who mainly makes his living as a freelance cinematographer for television, elicits a certain ethereal drama from the remains of old manor houses, decrepit prisons, hospitals, and mental institutions, and even indoor swimming complexes far past their prime.

In 1966, photographer Danny Lyon returned to his hometown of New York City after spending years documenting the Civil Rights movement in the South and motorcycle gangs in Chicago. Once back in the city, Lyon took his mother’s advice: “If you’re bored, just talk to someone on the subway.” Using a Rolleiflex camera and Kodak color transparency film, he started taking photographs of New York’s commuters and the city’s dingy, fluorescent-lit train stations. Eight of Lyon’s large-scale subway photographs are on view for the first time in Underground: 1966, a show hosted by MTA Arts & Design, at the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center station in Brooklyn.

In April 2012, artist Angelica Dass started a project, called Humanae, to map every human skin tone and match it with a corresponding Pantone color. Dass samples a small pixel from a portrait subject’s skin—usually from the well-lit cheek area—and then matches it to a Pantone hue, which is used as the backdrop. Her photographs for Humanae now number around 2,000, and collectively, they create a stunning spectrum of pink, brown, honey, and taupe (the list goes on)—hues that correspond to all possible skin pigmentations.

Do you pride yourself on having a good eye? Do you think you notice details others don’t? Well, test yourself by finding the sniper hiding in these deceptively tranquil-looking landscapes. Even for those with a keen eye, spotting snipers is close to impossible, as this photo series by German artist Simon Menner proves. Covered in moss, hiding behind trees, or buried under twigs and branches, these stealth sharpshooters are as good as invisible even when they’re circled in red. The photos are a chilling glimpse into the world of modern warfare: In the military, design is often used not to please the human eye but to deceive it.

Thanks to rising student debts and the weak economy of post-recession America, it’s no longer shameful to move back home after college–it’s a common reality. But that doesn’t make it any easier for young adults to live under their parents’ watch once again. Photographer Damon Casarez captures such adulthoods-on-hold in Boomerang Kids a photographic collection of college grads who moved home. “This project started out of my own struggle to find work and support myself after graduating college with over $100,000 in student loans,” Casarez tells Co.Design. Casarez spent two months traveling to eight states and 16 cities to photograph his subjects.

Miho Aikawa’s series of intimate photos reveals how, as New Yorkers and Tokyoites sit down for their evening meal, tradition is evolving to fit into the chaos of contemporary life. “Having dinner isn’t just about eating food, or even about nutrition,” Aikawa says. “It reveals so many aspects of our lives, much more than lunch or even breakfast would. And because dinnertime is usually private, it uniquely reveals a part of a person’s lifestyle.”

Before San Francisco was overrun by tech bros, the city was an idyllic, if gritty, melting pot, as photographer Janet Delaney reveals in her book South of the Market. The roots of the tension between blue-collar Bay Area residents and Silicon Valleyites go back decades, though: After moving to San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) district in 1978, Delaney witnessed firsthand as her eclectic neighborhood gave way to the then-new Moscone Convention Center (which now hosts Apple and Google events). From 1980 to 1982, she photographed her streets almost every week–until rent grew too high, and she relocated to the Mission District.

San Francisco-based photographer David Waldorf portrays the close-knit community of a Sonoma Valley trailer park. Some residents are migrant workers who harvest grapes in the nearby Sonoma Valley, while others are fixed-income retirees or former drug addicts. Waldorf was careful to develop trust and friendship with his subjects: “I hung out there for years, and people at the park really seemed to love the photos I took,” he says. “One guy even blew his up to the size of a poster to hang on his wall.”